Stones LP, Tour Due Soon

Meanwhile, back in the States, the Rolling Stones converged on Greenwich Village in Manhattan to shoot a promotional video for "Waiting on a Friend," a song from their forthcoming album. With a camera crew grinding away under the guidance of Michael Lindsay-Hogg (director of the Beatles' Let It Be), the action opened with Mick Jagger sitting on a front stoop chatting with some locals. Soon he was joined by Keith Richards, and the two strolled up the street, lipsyncing the song's lyrics along the way. They turned into a "local pub" (actually, the St. Mark's Bar and Grill, a popular Village bistro), where they joined Ron Wood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts — the "local band" — and the group commenced pounding out the rest of the tune. After the filming, the Stones launched into a brief garage-band-style jam for the few patrons in the bar, while a small crowd outside cheered. Further shooting was done later at the Taft Hotel.

So where's the album? It's now due out the third week of August; entitled Tattoo You, it will include ten tracks in addition to "Waiting on a Friend." As for their tour, the Stones began two weeks of intensive, twelve-hour-a-day rehearsals in New York on July 14th; by then, they were due to decide whether they were ready to go out and, as one Stones insider enticingly put it, "do the kind of tour they want to do."

This is a story from the August 20, 1981 issue of Rolling Stone.